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arXiv · 2406.03354

Can Social Media Platforms Transcend Political Labels? An Analysis of Neutral Conservations on Truth Social

Chaitya Shah·Ritesh Konka·Gautam Malpani·Swapneel Mehta·Lynnette Hui Xian Ng
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Abstract

There is a prevailing perception that content on a social media platform generally have the same political leaning. These platforms are often viewed as ideologically congruent entities, reflecting the majority opinion of their users; a prime example of this is Truth Social. While this perception may exist, it is essential to verify the platform's credibility, acknowledging that such platforms contain meaningful insights with neutral stances. To this end, we examine the dissemination of Wikipedia links on the alt-right platform, Truth Social. Wikipedia is recognized for enforcing content neutrality and serves as a unique lens to analyze the objectivity of user-generated content on Truth Social. By scrutinizing Truths with and without Wikipedia links, identifying toxicity trends & recognizing coordinated networks, we observe a lower level of engagement and a tendency for Truths shared on Truth Social to cover more neutral topics when it includes Wikipedia links (Wiki Truths). Given the significantly different engagement and nature of content shared of Wiki Truths against Non-Wiki Truths, we emphasize that we should not generalize the techno-political affiliation of a social media platform, but rather should investigate the content closely.

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Chaitya Shah, Ritesh Konka, Gautam Malpani, Swapneel Mehta, Lynnette Hui Xian Ng. 2024-06-05. Can Social Media Platforms Transcend Political Labels? An Analysis of Neutral Conservations on Truth Social. https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.03354

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